A Bad Day for the Island of Sodor

I might have used this title before, but it seemed apt, so I had to use it again. I woke up this morning -- as usual -- to the dulcet tones of National Public Radio's Morning Edition. I usually doze in blissful comfort while my husband does his exercises and gets dressed, under the pretence that I don't want to get in his way, but let's face it -- it's really all about getting a few more minutes of sleep.

No rest for the wicked today, though. I had been awake for only a few minutes when the announcer came on and said something like this (not a direct quote, but as close as I can get): "Do your kids like Thomas the Tank Engine? Well, you'd better pry those wooden trains from their chubby little fingers, because RC Toys has announced a recall of those Thomas Trains because their paint may contain dangerous levels of lead. Have a nice day!" (Okay, it probably wasn't quite that gleeful, but I was barely awake.)

My eyes sprang open, and I reached over and grabbed my computer -- my daughter comes by her "white and nerdiness" honestly -- and quickly scanned the web for the recall information, then threw on my clothes and slipped downstairs for some covert train-purging operations.

As luck has it, of the approximately three million or so trains Xavier and Gwen have acquired over the years, only five were covered by the recall (despite the moniker of "the Great Thomas the Tank Engine Recall," Thomas was mercifully spared. All four or five of them in our train box.) We put the affected toys in a (much smaller) box which we will ship off to RC Toys tomorrow for replacements. I think we are actually getting the better part of this deal, because most of Xav's trains look like he has been reenacting every great train wreck since the dawn of time. We counted our lucky stars that the decimation had been so light. Out of three million trains, the kids would never notice that five of them were gone.

Of course, five minutes after I left for work, Xavier was crying to Adam, "Daddy, I can't find my Island of Sodor fire engines!" Thank goodness he hasn't noticed that James, the Splendid Red Engine, has also been decommissioned.


This afternoon, I was working with our QA guy to try to get a release pushed out by the end of the day. The QA guy also has a four-year-old boy who is hooked on Thomas, so I had let him know about the recall and we swapped a few gripes.

Anyway, he had just sent me a request for some data which would normally take me two minutes to generate, when Gwen wandered up and said, "Mommy, I want to watch a movie."

"Um, okay, hon. What do you want to watch?" I asked as I logged into Oracle.

"Thomas and Friends!"

"Um, okay. Can you put that on yourself?"

"No, I need help."

"Okay, just a minute."

Now, Gwen wasn't complaining or anything, but it was a little distracting having her hover there, and I realized (as I noticed I was logged into the wrong instance of Oracle) that I would probably get the query run faster if I helped her put the movie on, so I did.

When I returned to the computer, I typed a quick instant message to the QA guy that said, "Sorry for the delay -- someone was suffering from Thomas Withdrawal over here."

He wrote back, "I understand, and I'm really angry about it."

I blinked a couple times before I realized that he was talking about the recall, but I figured it would be quicker to just run the query and let him know later that there was no child lying prone with grief at my feet, bemoaning the loss of his toys.


By the way, if you are the parent of a young child and feel that his Thomas the Tank Engine set could do with a good spring cleaning, here is all the excuse you need: http://recalls.rc2.com/recalls_Wood_0607.html


In happier news, Xavier's red bicycle arrived after all, so he didn't have to settle on the yellow. He was a little apprehensive at first (most of his riding yesterday consisted of him clinging to the handlebars with a death grip while his sister pushed him around the driveway), but today he was warming to it. By the time we came in, he was riding it like a Pro (which seems to mean occasionally "accidentally" crashing into Mom or Gwen's bike).

Thank God it's at least another twelve years before he starts driving the car.